#fig
Here, this small little bubble I exist in.
Safe.
Longing for familiarity.
Hurt is home and I lust to be broken.
Someone once told me about a fig tree.
I long for one that reaches and chooses my branch.
With this crippled mind—
Still, I am yet to be chosen.
May 8
May 8, 2026 at 9:42 PM UTC
The fog is now a frozen mist
The weight caused the old tree to list
The thin layers of ice
Though heavy, look nice
Like something mother nature's just kissed
Feb 16
Feb 16, 2026 at 9:29 AM UTC
faint divine sun dances
between trees and branches
falling upon my fig tree
open my rib, set my heart free.
~and all our fingers,
all our veins,
each are branches of a mission.
and with life we wrinkle,
with age we sacrifice fertile freedom. enlightment keeps us alive
like the nurturing water.
but immortality?
fig is the fruit of realization, as golden wisdom rays bless you, forever.
immortality is
in the wisdom of mysteries.~
fig is a wise man
sitting on a vast, ancient land.
his eyes seem to find something,
in the secrets mist held.
~and you search
all fountains,
all cups,
yet you found it in a lake.
and never,
never so immortal you were,
so thirsty for truth.
fig blessed you,
like the early morning sun rays.
your heart was never so exposed, never so ******
never so touched...~
under her fig tree.
Apr 2, 2025
Apr 2, 2025 at 1:13 PM UTC
eating figs
eating ***
eating flesh
i swim through my mother's veins
and peel back layers,
distinctly feminine.
i see me.
i feel me.
i taste me.
we hold delicate
yet strong and vibrant lovers
in our mouths,
inflated candy eggs—cosmic nectar.
foolishly gazing at our sordid massacres:
flesh upon flesh
seed upon fleshy seed
visions of nightquests
sing-songing liquidly
i vanish into wormholes,
fiery transformations,
and bitter leaves,
which weep through silver pores.
feverishly, we pick apart the stems,
dropping them away.
hurry, hurry!
we're so impatient to get these figs
into our mouths.
heads crane forward
and tongues ****** first.
hands follow, fingers last.
crush down once, thrice
on earth maternal—
it's not juice, it's cream.
siddhis speculatively come forward
and burn triangle patterns behind our eyelids.
she is freed again from past recollections,
elegantly fighting off disease—cellularly—while drumming solos,
gnashing figs,
and caressing twigs with toes.
i invite you to breathe me in—
soft, solid air,
stale with anticipation
but honey-lemon sweet,
and empty besides.
we pour sweet broths into banana-leaf cups
and drink beetles out of sugarcones,
traces of ectoplasm dribbling down our chins,
violetly forgetting the echoes of
peppermint vapors,
and nourishing our bellies
with heavy, pregnant plant mothers.
i long for excess,
and i can never get enough.
besides,
it is the summer of figs,
and we cry openly
at the beads of sweat
forever forming on glassy surfaces.
i taste-touch with my fingers
and feel-taste with my tongue,
and still i feel that we aren't close enough,
so i invite it to enter me and become me,
and now
i am fig.
it's as if the cilia-seeds
and tender pink spots
expect the pressure.
it's true:
we expect this solid, gravitational pressure
and they rip off wings,
just to bathe in our nectar.
she hadn't known true ecstasy
until this violation of figs,
until her madness imploded secretly
like their demure insides,
and all she could think about
was jelly pulp and pale achenes.
so saccharine, you say,
wiping your mouth with a sticky hand,
and wiping your hand on stiff denim,
but really there's even more sweet to come later.
green-plump
violet-plump
pink-pulp
swallow
i hear it before my ears do.
i see it before my eyes do.
i swimmingly tesselate
and wade through the liquid air,
particles dissolving around me.
there's some give,
and i'm able, you see,
to be here in this palace of
pent-up pleasures and lastly,
comes stillness.
she weeps hatred from her body
so it doesn't seep
into her half-digested fig:
the fig of all figs.
caked with dried mud and chocolate,
we emerge
and fall off effortlessly
into angles of light.
dust rises like a prism
along pre-choreographed
provocations of smoke—
steps cascading for spirits of anjeer
to patter down
into our realm.
feed me, they say.
and so we do.
we break open the figs
with childish fingers,
tasting before offering
on little plates carved out of spoons,
melting coconut lashes and spidermilk
in the process.
the oven creaks quietly,
and raindrops lift gauzy veils
from drowsy eyelids
on sleepy mornings.
pulling waterwords
from unification,
fiery feelings die down
until they're just a glimmer—
a glimmer of softness,
with wet embers tantalizingly
dripping fireworks,
like childhood.
waves murmur something secret,
and the whispers only take 5,000 years
before they reach your ears,
yet you still startle and awaken,
sweat on the brow,
and glisten your way through,
splashing sloppily through
paper screens
to deliver messages.
iron tea kettles sit in dying ashes for far too long.
in my visions,
i saw ripe, bursting figs
hurtling across starlit skies,
blossoming beautifully
before dropping heavily and with sound.
and suddenly it was summer—
radiant, glowing summer—
with our skin dissolving upwards
in the golden heat,
sparkling dramatically
in the decaying light.
i wanted to pull something out of me
but the strings were tied to my organs.
slippery insides meant less danger,
so we tiptoed on grains of sand
and grains of rice,
and black beads,
and black beans,
and pearls,
and magnets.
we tripped through hours,
while minutes crawled to a close,
and sifted fine blue watersilk
until it exploded with mollusks.
i am a clam
and you are a gallon of fir tree sap,
delivered every wednesday,
to embellish our
fried and crispy things.
almond-shaped plumes and
majestic, purple heliochromes
blaze saturn rings coldly,
while the fruit falls apart—
first at the center—
and our gaze lingers on mother:
she is
dancing,
and dancing.
Aug 12, 2021
Aug 12, 2021 at 1:42 PM UTC
My heart is rotten
By such a felling disappointed
I Hate it
I hate him
I hate them
I hate the world
Disappointed
Like a fig!
Jun 22, 2020
Jun 22, 2020 at 8:55 PM UTC
.
Fig leaves suit you,
but I can't wait 'til Autumn ;)
© Pagan Paul (2018)
Oct 26, 2018
Oct 26, 2018 at 1:39 PM UTC
“every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree and there shall be none to make him afraid.”
Letter from George Washington, 1790, to the Jewish community of Newport, Rhode Island
<•>
multiple motifs present poesy alternatives,
but one supremes
safety in your own chosen orchard,
supping on clear water, wine and figs
children of trees, nurtured by one’s own hands,
children of your children, running the grove,
shouting out in sweet safety
the wasps happy shameless pollinate,
dreaming of more generations,
ruefully smiling, thinking of
Adam and Eve, who ashamed of
their apple’d sexuality,
hid their nakedness of course beneath
the safety of
fig leaves
you do not pray for safety
you do not ask for anything,
nothing to fear says the father,
for you already live in our own
George’s garden of eden
Sep 22, 2018
Sep 22, 2018 at 1:37 PM UTC
Anklet of your feet or its my mondegreen?
ringing cham cham cham jingling -
does I have to pay the cost?
Your night bird song, or my belief is unreal?
New in my stomach hemlock root is growing
I love again, the fig flower you were showing.
Mar 23, 2018
Mar 23, 2018 at 3:51 PM UTC
you don't love me
behind
my
back
we thought
you never
should
have
turn
ed
around
oh how perfect
you were
suppose
to be
we
think
in her
head
she
said
?
...
..
.
Feb 13, 2018
Feb 13, 2018 at 6:42 AM UTC
There is a place
in you
that needs a name
but you're an absolute beginner
at naming things.
Centred in this pathos, I've never known
whether to create stillness or bitter passion.
In this, there is a sacrifice,
something to see through to the end.
The openness I sometimes extract
can break me down.
Is it better
to find a way to say it?
Would it be better to hang for it
or to forget
how the fig is fertilised?
In its sweetness,
to forget
the distaste of undermining friendship.
I have stretched myself into the past.
I have stretched my body
to see the places it could end.
Vein bubbles
from where it started,
wet bloodgasps;
sorry smear of a poem
they write your name next to.
History repeats, all that's left;
neutrality at the cost of
a better passion,
and the count of
how many ribs you have and how many you've lost.
I abuse my fingers
and still expect them to carry me through.
There's always a way
to see trauma as something to crawl into.
Apr 28, 2016
Apr 28, 2016 at 5:59 PM UTC
**gingerly on the knife-point of a problem
my inflated ego slowly was punctured
i heard the hiss of its demystification
in that constricted moment of revelation
a moment that enthused about the demise
of my avid hallucination now laid bare
salvation, the voice of naked truths chanted
is neither in the fig leaves nor in bashfulness
and the humming monotone of desperation
is a boost to candid inactivity and stillness
it is in such big-bore moments that we of
puerile yearnings recognize our childishness
a voice told me to stop tempting fate forthwith
for in truth i was a child with a dangerous toy
and only pampered tutors could stay the course**
Feb 6, 2016
Feb 6, 2016 at 10:21 AM UTC
The way fig flesh
Folds itself
into each hour,
its skin rubbed
from gray to
purple, bitten into
yellow prickled with
gold seeds stuck
to your lips. It’s
late, maybe midnight
or two we’re not sure
as our feet trip
over stone streets and
we bid the other
buona notte.
I am hungry and
very much wanting
*** Instead
I sauté the
zucchini blossoms
my host mom
bought all’mercado.
and in her kitchen
I lick
the mouth of the
olive oil bottle as
the petals pucker
in her cast iron
pan and then with
a whisper of salt
they are burning
my mouth as I
pluck
each
from the pan, oil
dripping down my
wrists and after I
am still hungry
and very much
wanting ***
but I decide
it’s enough
to have figs and
zucchini blossoms
and I go to bed,
my mouth tasting
something
like a melody.
Oct 7, 2015
Oct 7, 2015 at 4:38 PM UTC